"Race" is the most ubiquitous scientific concept that has no basis whatsoever in science. -- Atty. Francis L. Holland.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

With All His Wars, It Must be Hell Being President Obama

It must be hell to be President Obama, with a perceived responsibility to direct or at least manipulate and influence the so-called "democracy movements" in so many countries simultaneously. I admit that I haven't researched any of these countries enough to provide convincing back-stories to the chaos that is breaking out all over the Middle East and North Africa.

As African Americans, we certainly should be concerned that three countries--Tunisia, Libya and Egypt--are in some state of chaos as we speak, while the pink and purple revolutions driven by conservative US think tanks and facilitated by Facebook and Twitter are setting snowballs in motion, in the US' arrogant belief that chaos is better than the strong and stable leaders of the present.

Nearly four months ago, longtime Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak finally yielded to political reality and stepped down from power. Mubarak's fall -- coming on the heels of the ouster of neighboring Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali -- was seen by many as part of a domino effect.

The Arab world, it seemed, was finally on the brink of a peaceful democratic transition that had eluded the troubled region for generations.

Today, however, the promise of a peaceful Arab Spring appears to be yielding to the reality of a long, violent summer as dictators across the Middle East and North Africa draw a line in the sand and fight to maintain control of their countries.

In fact, CNN has a round-up of the many "powder kegs" where CIA and neo-conservative "democracy movements" that are really just destabilization movements are taking their tolls

What in the world could ever have made conservative American think tanks and the Government believe that strong and well-established leaders in these countries would go without a fight? Would President Obama leave office because NATO and the UN said he should?

The truth is that, with the experience in Iraq and Afghanistan ongoing, it should have been obvious to all that dictatorial regimes maintained peace and order, while destroying these regimes in the absence of a clear alternative just leads to chaos and mass deaths, refugee movements and . . . chaos.

And yet there are those neo-conservatives in Washington and Virginia who have been yearning for "regime change" in these countries for decades. They seem finally to have gotten close to their wishes in a number of countries, but the CIA and Defense Department cannot control what fills the voids when these regimes are changed. Before you ask your daughter to go change her clothes before she goes to a party, shouldn't you have some way to predict and influence what she changes into? What if she changes a skimpy dress for a bra and panties?

That's the problem the US is facing right now, from--let's look at the map--from Tunisia (in African) west to Pakistan and from Syria south to Yemen (in Africa). Will all of these countries adopt western-style democracies, or will they end up like Iraq and Afghanistan: failed states unable to control their borders and impossible to contain warring factions, some or all of which are supported financially and sometimes militarily by the US Government.

When you consider that the very existence of the European Union is in doubt because of the world banking crisis whose architects hailed from the USA, and add that to chaos potentially throughout northern Africa and the Middle East, Obama may be creating an election strategy that he hasn't yet perceived: turn the entire world into a war zone or an economic basket case, and then say:

'I'm a "war president" and no one has faced (created) as many crises as I have, while successfully preventing them from reaching our borders. The potential for regime change in every country that annoys us has never been better, but the challenges are so complex that there is no time for a governor with no foreign policy experience to get up to speed on all of this mayhem.

There is a method to our map-changing madness, but I am the only candidate who knows what that method is.Not everyone can play sixteen dimensional chess the way I can."

I'm sure that's true. People who have worked on far simpler political campaigns have felt more overwhelmed than the President does in the midst of all of this madness. Obama is steady at the wheel, even when the wheel spins out of control.

Meanwhile, the CIA and Defense Department know that the best result in all of these countries is for the competing factions to kill each other off entirely, so that the US can have unfettered access to all of the oil and other raw materials, with no local populations to get in the way.

Who ever imagined that the US would go to war again Libya this year. But it is!

Who imagined that the US would be firing missiles into Pakistan? But it is!

Who imagined that Obama, who said he would have voted agains the war in Iraq, would nevertheless create and amplify more wars than George W. Bush? But he has!

I think I can see a way to support Obama for President in 2012. Like it or not, President Obama has created, catalyzed and/or meddled in more intra-national and international wars than any other Black President in the history of the United States and even the history of the world. That has to stand and be counted for something, even if nothing good comes of it. At least it's one for the history books.